We have certainly all had our fair share of virtual events during the current global COVID19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Whether it is Zoom meetings or physical events pushed on-line via webinars and virtual events, this element of digital transformation has become ubiquitous.<\/p>\n
It is easy to forget that webinars have been around for less than 25 years \u2013 the Internet and the World Wide Web created the technology and the venue for events to go on-line.<\/p>\n
In fact, I remember doing one of the earliest webinars at Compaq \u201cway back\u201d in the late 1990s.\u00a0 Granted the technology was crude — it was literally \u201ctalking heads\u201d on a conference call supported by visuals back in the day.\u00a0 We have come a very long way!<\/p>\n
Today, webinars are more important than ever. Our \u201cnew reality\u201d has accelerated the pace of digital transformation and webinars are a critical component of the marketing toolkit to deliver events and engagement with customers in a time where we cannot do in-person physical events.<\/p>\n
I drank the \u201cwebinar Kool aid\u201d long ago. \u00a0We were early adopters of webinars at SAP Marketing and executed many on-line events with webinar platforms, providing great awareness and lead generation tactics for our field marketing and regional teams.<\/p>\n
When you are an early adopter you must learn on the fly and develop your own best practices.\u00a0 I found that one of the best ways to learn is to network and attend events with your peers and learn from fellow subject matter experts (SMEs).<\/p>\n
One such person is Jaime Allison Snyder, a Senior Marketing Specialist at RSM<\/a>, which focuses on tax, audit and consulting services for the mid-market.<\/p>\n I met Jaime several years ago at an ON24 Webinar World<\/a> event and was extremely impressed at the webinar program she and her team had developed. Jaime has run a successful webinar program at RSM that is both highly scalable (more than 200 webinars per year) and features strong knowledge transfer and value, utilizing Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits.<\/p>\n It was my pleasure to recently catch up with Jaime and discuss the current state of webinars and on-line events and how virtual on-line education and training is being shaped by ongoing digital transformation.<\/p>\n Q: Jaime, at a recent ON24 Webinar World event you were christened \u201cthe Webinar Queen of RSM\u201d and your success with your webinar programs was compared with <\/em><\/strong>Mark Bornstein<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, the VP of Content Marketing at ON24 and their self-professed \u201cChief Webinerd\u201d.\u00a0 What are the critical success factors of driving a highly successful and visible webinar program at RSM?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A: Organization and attention to detail are both critical success factors to me. I\u2019m typically managing multiple events per week, sometimes even at the same time. Making sure all the Is are dotted and Ts are crossed is paramount to successful execution.<\/p>\n Q: You have background in radio and communications from before you joined RSM marketing.\u00a0 Jaime, what skills from that experience have you leveraged in marketing and events for RSM, and what are some best practices people can learn from to make their webinars and virtual events more impactful and engaging? \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A: For me, aside from being a solid communicator, it is remaining calm under pressure and knowing how to troubleshoot and solve technical issues.<\/p>\n Q: \u00a0Jaime, you deliver over 200 webinars a year for RSM.\u00a0 What is the \u201csecret sauce\u201d to delivering such a highly scalable yet varied program? How does knowledge transfer and CPE credits work in positioning and delivering your webinars and how do you manage such a wide array of subject matter experts?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A: Again, it all comes back to organization and attention to detail. With multiple events happening simultaneously, it is critical to take a step-by-step approach and confirming every detail of every event. Mistakes happen\u2026. but not on my webcasts.<\/p>\n CPE is a huge value-add for our webcasts, especially in 2020 with no in-person events happening. Offering a quality program that informs the participant, as well as providing that needed CPE credit, can set up apart from our competitors.<\/p>\n Q: \u00a0How does Marketing Technology (martech) and the virtual on-line webinar platform enable you to deliver a quality customer event experience that clearly brings strong repeat attendees? Any thoughts and best practices on reporting and analytics to communicate your success and deliver leads and prospects to sales?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A: Our ON24 platform integration provides a seamless experience for participants; once you are registered for the event, there\u2019s no need to login a second time. Additionally, having the reporting integrated automatically following the webcast eliminates extra steps for the team and puts the data at the fingertips of marketing and sales.<\/p>\n Q: \u00a0Jaime, we have talked about how \u201cmodern marketing\u201d has produced the \u201cmodern webinar\u201d and with a it a rich, branded and highly engaging on-line experience. Where do you see this going and what are the skills, technologies and more people should be looking at\/investing in to prepare for this \u201cdigital future\u201d? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A: Online events have changed drastically in 2020 and will continue to evolve in the coming years. I think we have seen an end or a dramatic shift to the in-person events industry, and that puts online events at the forefront of setting the tone for events going forward. A perfect example of this is RSM\u2019s 2020 Virtual Tax Summit<\/a> in Nov. 2020. Once a full-day event in multiple locations, RSM\u2019s pivoted this year and offered an exclusively virtual environment with interactive features to engage participants. In 2019, we had 643 registrants and 359 attendees across all locations of our RSM Tax Summit as a physical, in-person event.\u00a0 Our 2020 Virtual Tax summit had 4,360 registrants and 3,065 attendees for the ON24 webinar environment itself. This was very scalable — 15 out of 16 of the plenary sessions had over 1,000 attendees, with over 23,000 webcast attendees across the entire virtual event.\u00a0 This was a hugely successful event for RSM and quite a litmus test for virtual events moving forward. For future events, we will allow more time for technical build out of the platform and have a more solid follow-up plan in place in advance of the event.\u00a0 This will be the trend in events going forward for RSM.<\/p>\n Jaime thank you for your time today and a highly informative discussion of webinars during an incredibly challenging time. Your experience and success as the \u201cwebinar queen of RSM\u201d are both inspirational and a fascinating \u201ccase study\u201d of virtualization and digital transformation. We look forward to hearing more in the future as you expand and innovate your webinar program at RSM and more.<\/p>\n Jaime <\/em><\/strong>is Senior Marketing Specialist at RSM and an experienced marketing and communications professional who has led RSM\u2019s marketing webinar program since 2014. Connect with her on <\/em>LinkedIn<\/em><\/a> Fred<\/em><\/strong> is a Research Director at Dresner Advisory Services, a high technology industry marketing veteran and former Senior Marketing Director for SAP Global Marketing. <\/em>Join him online at<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>LinkedIn<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have certainly all had our fair share of virtual events during the current global COVID19 pandemic. Whether it is Zoom meetings or physical events pushed on-line via webinars and virtual events, this element of digital transformation has become ubiquitous. It is easy to forget that webinars have been around for less than 25 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":80693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-event-marketing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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